When Jennifer Tilton contacted her family to let them know she was OK after hiding under a restaurant table during the Paris attacks Friday night, her mother thought of a similar situation just years before.

On April 15, 2013, Natalie Glover’s daughter, an MIT student at that time, was just two blocks away from the finish line of the Boston Marathon when the bombs went off.

“It’s just a feeling if helplessness,” Glover said about learning of the news in Paris. “She’s still very young, so I worry about her wherever she is.”

Glover said she first heard about the attacks in Paris from her sister. Tilton, 20, sent text messages Friday telling family she made it back to where she was staying, but didn’t go into details about what she saw in the city as she hid underneath a table during the attacks.